Recently, infection in a hospital has been a very serious problem, and it is very important to prevent infection in a hospital as well as medical care of a patient. It is known that the infection in a hospital is caused by health care providers as a vector. Therefore, disinfection of a the hands of health care providers is necessary after rendering medical care to a patient.
Examples of conventional disinfectant compositions are ethanol solutions including a cationic disinfectant such as benzalkonium chloride or chlorhexidine gluconate. However, it is customary to cleanse the hands using a fatty acid soap before disinfecting the hands to improve the disinfection effect. The fatty acid soap has a strong deferring effect and a harmful influence on skin roughness. Further, the fatty acid soap is an anionic substance, so that, when the detergent is not completely removed by rinsing, a cationic disinfectant reacts with the fatty acid soap and the effect of the disinfectant is reduced. In the medical field, the reaction between anion and cation is not widely recognized and, complete rinsing of the hands is difficult. Furthermore, micro-organisms can easily contaminate rough skin on the hands and secondary infection may be caused.
As described above, a disinfectant-detergent composition which has excellent a disinfection effect without causing skin roughness and a unfavorable reaction with a quick drying type cationic disinfectant is desired by medical workers who have to disinfect their hands frequently so as to prevent the infection in a hospital.